StarWorker: "You attach meaning to multitudes. Your kill count exceeds ours by magnitudes."
StarWorker: "Is this objectionable, or just hypocritical?"
[OOC] Abraham: Is he referring to Zinda personally, or humanity in general?
Metis: "Could you clarify your meaning?"
StarWorker: "The population here was but a few. Of Kilrah that was quite untrue."
Zinda Tegram: "Generally we don't assign moral weight across a whole species."
Spyboy: "I don't believe that was what they meant, Zinda."
Spyboy: "I believe they were attempting to correlate their extermination of the population of this system to our destruction of Kilrah."
StarWorker: "So it is better to do genocide, than to limit to mere unicide?"
Zinda Tegram: "How the hell did you get that from what I said?"
Zinda Tegram: "My understanding of our destruction of Kilrah was that it was a moral atrocity we had to do to ensure our own survival."
Metis: "That question has no answer."
[OOC] Metis: In regards to the worker's, not Zinda's.
StarWorker: "Murder for survival is alright? What we did here should keep none up at night."
Spyboy: "And they would tell you that because their bodies will eventually succumb to entropy, the trillions of people in their home systems are the same and therefore have more weight."
Zinda Tegram: "Fuck it. Spyboy, you try to explain ethics to them."
[OOC] WC GM: Giving him the simple task…
Spyboy: "I'm not inclined to bother, honestly."Zinda Tegram sighs.
Spyboy: "Given their moral outlooks…too much of me thinks that them disappearing from the universe would be a good thing."
Spyboy: "They're correlating two very different situations."
Zinda Tegram: "The fact is that you destroyed a system without ever even trying to open negotiations. It's dumb and pointless and hardly necessary to your own survival."
Spyboy: "One - a state of conflict, two sides which know each other and can and have communicated, who have been locked in a brutal conflict with massive loss of life on both sides. One side successfully ends the conflict by destroying a world."
Spyboy: "Is it a moral outrage? Yes."
Zinda Tegram: "This system was not the center of a coordinate attempt to kill your entire people off, nor did killing everyone here even insure your own survival long term."
Zinda Tegram: "It was a waste."
Spyboy: "The other - two sides, one of which thinks the other is interesting, the other of which thinks the first is a myth. The world was destroyed because it was a less-convenient way of opening communications. The people on the world had little warning and no chance of escape."Spyboy sighs
Spyboy: "Ironically I don't feel any particular rancor. It's like with Elles."
Zinda Tegram: "…yeah, really…"
Spyboy: "I don't hate an AI when it does something stupid and kills people. It doesn't know any better. And to be honest, I don't know that it can know any better."
[OOC] Abraham: FYI, I draw the line at having a Neph kid running around The Roland.
Spyboy: "That doesn't mean I'm not going to prevent it from repeating the act, of course."
Spyboy: "Now, Elles we know can learn - though there's a possibility that given her number of cores, her internal logic has ossified. But given her behavior, she's clearly able to moderate her own impulses."
Spyboy: "Plus as a further example, we have Metis, who hasn't butchered anyone in order to get hands-on knowledge of our insides. And since Metis is using the same architecture as Elles, just with less redundancy, Elles can have morality."
Spyboy: "I'm not convinced, however, that the Nephilim are actually capable of learning."
Heggy: "They can hear you, you know."
Metis: "You create more data intact than in pieces."
Zinda Tegram: "Metis! Even if they'd be more data in pieces, you can't!"
Zinda Tegram: "People have innate worth."
Spyboy: "Thank you, Metis."Spyboy sighs
Abraham: "I think that's not quite true. It's not that they can't, it's that they've given up on it. It's too hard so they created their Abrahim messiah to do it instead."
Abraham: "I'm right, aren't I?"
Spyboy: "The problem with a hive mind is that a hive mind is immortal. The problem with immortal intelligence is ossification. An ossified intelligence can acquire new knowledge - but not reevaluate. Which, I suppose, is the problem the Integrated will eventually run into…"
Heggy: "I'm more worried about the problem we get when the Nephilim decide to take offense at what you're saying."
Abraham: "Maybe not. I get the impression are all, individually, genetically different from each other."
Metis: "…and Zinda says vivisection is wrong…and I do not have a medical license…"
Metis: "That just requires introducing periodic reevaluation into the primary commands of the hive mind."
[OOC] Abraham: Protip: Never give an android a medical license until the'yre at least 21.
Spyboy: "I'm not. Response of any kind would be communication, and I think the Nephilim are too busy pouting."
[OOC] Spyboy: Or WC is having to couch their lines in rhyme. Haha, he must have been desperate to make more work for himself!
[OOC] Metis: It was either this or work on his ICBM again, and he's already been warned by NATO once.
StarWorker: "What is this 'offense' we should take? Is it something you like to make?"
[OOC] WC GM: Or I don't mind letting the PCs debate.
[OOC] Spyboy: Eh, Spyboy's just wandering off on a tangent.
Zinda Tegram: "It's….a social concept that you probably don't need to care about."
Metis: "Taking offense is the state of being displeased or angry in response to an event."
[OOC] Spyboy: "I'm distracting you, you big goof!"
[OOC] WC GM: Mere lines that rhyme are fine. Making them chime in their prime is the whine.Heggy reaches back and whaps Spyboy's helmet before he can respond.
[OOC] Abraham: Note to self: Promote Heggy over Spyboy.
StarWorker: "Why would we be angry at the advice receipt? We ask, you give; your work, our treat."
Metis: "Because your inner psychological workings are currently obscured, thus it is not possible to know whether you can take offense, and if you can, whether you will. So some would err on the side of caution."
Abraham: "It's also good practice for certain members of the crew."
StarWorker: "This is true. If we knew how we find what is true, our needs would be few."
StarWorker: "But anger we do not feel. Instead, more wisdom of yours would appeal."
Spyboy: "Case…in point."Spyboy plays with the network settings for a moment, preventing the next few lines from being broadcast to the Nephilim.
Spyboy: "Admiral. How should we proceed? Should we ask the Nephilim to repair the gate at White, go through, and intervene somehow at the Nephilim homeworlds? Should we attempt to sabotage their operation here?"
Spyboy: "We can do that latter fairly easily, but it won't stick…"
Heggy: "He means even if we beat them here, a second time, they'll just come back somewhere else again. Especially given how factionalized they are."
Abraham: "Sabotage would, as you point out, be merely treating the symptoms. We need to deal with this in a more final manner. Unless someone has some very good objections, my instinct is to have them repair the White gate and go onto deal with the Neph on their homeworlds."
Spyboy: "I expect some vociferous objections to this, but…I think we may need some backup for this."
Heggy: "…Elles would be really useful to have along…"
Abraham: "I do not disagree. Who specifically were you thinking of?"
Spyboy: "…Elles. If we can figure out how."
Spyboy: "I mean, let's be honest. Every time they say 'you are the Abrahim' they mean that your name sounds a lot like Abrahim."
Spyboy: "But every time they talk about one of the proofs that you are Abrahim, or present a solution they want you to solve, they're talking about something that either Elles or Wayn's group has done."Abraham gives a small smile. "I don't think it will be hard to get Elles to help."
Spyboy: "Zinda, good news. We want you to Tremblor Mu Cephei Prime."
Zinda Tegram: "…What."
Spyboy: "Well, you know how it is."
Spyboy: "They say when you have two problems, you have a solution."
Zinda Tegram: "Our solution is…how does letting that *thing* out help us at all?"
Spyboy: "How does it not?"
Spyboy: "I mean, consider the worst-case scenario."
Zinda Tegram: "She integrates them again and now has their technology to go on a galaxy wide digging spree?"
Spyboy: "That would be that Elles manages to repurpose the Nephilim into self-reproducing digging machines that turn every planet into a habitable underground arcology."
Zinda Tegram: "Every asteroid in Oldziey is shot full of holes in six months?"
Spyboy: "Why Oldziey?"
Zinda Tegram: "Why not Oldziey? Lots of asteroids, lots of room for digging."
Spyboy: "Nah, no depth."
Zinda Tegram: "Earth too, if you care about that place."
Zinda Tegram: "Armstrong too."
Spyboy: "She wants cores, which means planets. More Earth and Mars and Asago."
Zinda Tegram: "Awww I'm sure she'd have room in her heart for small holes too. Holes in people."
Spyboy: "….Oh."
Spyboy: "Oh."
Spyboy: "That's why you've got such a problem with her."
Zinda Tegram: "Yeah."
Spyboy: "Because she digs holes, and you associate that with space stations."
Zinda Tegram: "…"
Zinda Tegram: "I…Oldziey is a mining system."
Spyboy: "So…you're jealous?"
Zinda Tegram: "Fuck off don't you…"
Zinda Tegram: "Kali! Can you shut him the fuck up, or something?"
Kali: "Nope. I'm stuck over here with you. Besides, this is getting interesting."
Spyboy: "Let's be honest here. We have pretty compelling evidence that Elles is capable of stretching her primary objectives back to not cut holes in people."
Spyboy: "We are that evidence."
Zinda Tegram: "…"
Spyboy: "…Well, unless you count injectors, in which case you and Abraham are evidence."
Zinda Tegram: "You can't ignore that many people starving next door and…and not have to pay."Spyboy sighs
Spyboy: "You know, it sounded like you agreed with me on that particular point earlier."
Zinda Tegram: "I…you saw that hospital."
Spyboy: "I also saw the farms that Elles created, that were then attacked and destroyed by Lagos who thought doing that would get them more food. Who were told that by other Lagos who thought additional food would deprive them of power."
Spyboy: "You can't blame Elles for the suffering in the Warrens."
Spyboy: "The Lagos wouldn't let her help."Spyboy pauses and gives that a moment to sink in.
Spyboy: "Any more than you can blame Earth for the suffering in Oldziey. The Oldzieyans wouldn't let us in."